Queen's Pawn Game
Queen's Pawn Game broadly refers to any chess opening starting with the move 1.d4, which is the second most popular opening move after 1.e4 (King's Pawn Game).
The term "Queen's Pawn Game" is usually used to describe openings beginning with 1.d4 where White does not play the Queen's Gambit. The most common Queen's Pawn Game openings are:
In the Encyclopaedia of Chess Openings (ECO), Closed Games (1.d4 d5) are classified under codes D00–D69. Openings where Black does not play 1...d5 are called Semi-Closed Games and classified as:
In the 19th century and early 20th century, 1.e4 was by far the most common opening move by White (Watson 2006:87), while the different openings starting with 1.d4 were considered somewhat unusual and therefore classed together as "Queen's Pawn Game".
As the merits of 1.d4 started to be explored, it was the Queen's Gambit which was played most often—more popular than all other 1.d4 openings combined. The term "Queen's Pawn Game" was then narrowed down to any opening with 1.d4 which was not a Queen's Gambit. Eventually, through the efforts of the hypermodernists, the various Indian Defences (such as the King's Indian, Nimzo-Indian, and Queen's Indian) became more popular, and as these openings were named, the term "Queen's Pawn Game" narrowed further.
The Black responses given below are ranked in order of popularity according to ChessBase for FIDE-rated games.
| a | b | c | d | e | f | g | h | ||
| 8 |              | 8 | |||||||
| 7 | 7 | ||||||||
| 6 | 6 | ||||||||
| 5 | 5 | ||||||||
| 4 | 4 | ||||||||
| 3 | 3 | ||||||||
| 2 | 2 | ||||||||
| 1 | 1 | ||||||||
| a | b | c | d | e | f | g | h | ||